Honestly, the 3-step proactive system is bull honkey— never worked for me, or a lot of people! This mask,however, is heaven sent. It is not for people who have very dry or brittle skin though, because it dries the skin out, that's how it works! I personally have medium to oily skin and tend to get a few bad pimples every month. I also have pretty bad black heads. I usually scrub my nose where most of my blackheads reside and put the mask in a thin later covering my nose. I go to bed, wake up, wash it off, and it's like my nose doesn't even HAVE pores. It sucks everything right out and closes the pores. I also put it on deep pimples to draw them out, or on the large painful ones to shrink them. It never dries my skin out because I do have oily skin. It also helps with my redness. I love using this overnight mask to treat problem pimples fast. My favorite acne product.